1000 Days

It is an artificial kind of marker (like decades and centuries), but the Ukraine War is now 1000 days old. It was 1000 days ago that Russia, under its current Orthodox Tsar Vladimir Putin, launched an imperialist aggressive war against its European neighbor Ukraine - the first such imperialist aggressive war on European territory since 1945. Under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the U.S. and NATO originally responded effectively. Since then, however, Trump's reelection, MAGA isolationism, and a general societal fatigue with "forever wars" have imperiled that response and endangered Ukraine's long-term survival prospects.

While Ukraine has never really been "winning" the war, there was a time when it looked at least as if Ukraine were on the offensive. Now that illusion has been dispelled - as may be the illusion that the United States is a reliable ally. In the "second-guessing" game that inevitably follows any major conflict, it may well be that the Biden Administration has been too slow in supplying needed weaponry to Ukraine, often eventually supplying weapons (like the ATACMS) that might have been better supplied, with more effect, earlier. Whatever the reasoning was, a mistake may have been made in the pace of American military aid. 

What the Biden Administration did do very well was to mobilize European support behind the defense of Ukraine. Europeans, having frittered away the post Cold War "peace dividend" and having for far too long relied too much on the U.S. defensive umbrella, were finally fully awakened to the degree of threat posed by Russian imperialism. Russia's neighbors - Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Poland) know from their long history what a dangerous enemy Russia inevitably is. So their awakening seems to have been more complete and effective. Of all of this war's ironies, Putin's goal of undermining NATO led instead to Sweden and Finland joining NATO and the (at least short-term) overall strengthening of that indispensable alliance. Whether Europe can continue to stand up against Putin, now that the U.S. can no longer be relied upon, remains to be seen.

"Advice and Consent"

In his famous treatment in The Federalist 76, of the Senate's role of "Advice and Consent" to presidential appointments, Alexander Hamilton observed that those who will have reflected upon the subject, "in relation to the appointment of the President, will, I presume, agree to the position, that there would always be great probability of having the place supplied by a man of abilities, at least respectable. ... The sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation. He will, on this account, feel himself under stronger obligations, and more interested to investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them."

Well, so much for that naive assumption!

In defending the requirement for senatorial confirmation of presidential nominations, Hamilton, who fully expected most such appointments to be confirmed, nonetheless recognized the value of a check upon presidential power. "It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. ... Though it might therefore be allowable to suppose that the Executive might occasionally influence some individuals in the Senate, yet the supposition, that he could in general purchase the integrity of the whole body, would be forced and improbable."

In the more than two centuries which have elapsed since Hamilton and his colleagues persuaded their fellow citizens of the wisdom of our constitutional arrangements, the Senate's "Advice and Consent" function has become one of that body's most highly prized prerogatives and responsibilities.

At least until now!

Confronted with certain cabinet nominations that can be characterized as unqualified and dangerous, the Senate that will convene in January will be tested as seldom in American history. Four Republican Senators would have to vote against a nomination for it to fail to receive the requisite confirmation. In an earlier era, that might be easily imagined. And it might yet happen, but it is easier to imagine the opposite - a Senate majority so compliant to the demands of its party's leader that this precious prerogative may be irresponsibly surrendered.

To obviate even this relatively remote possibility, the Administration has raised the possibility of recess appointments. If the Senate voluntarily adjourns to facilitate that - or if it confirms the nominees the normal way to avoid the humiliation of colluding in recess appointments - either way, yet another valued constitutional check will be abandoned, another bad precedent set, and the Senate's minimal moral legitimacy further eroded.

Recess Appointments, it should be noted, are a constitutional archaism - appropriate and necessary when Congress met for only a few months during the year and could not be quickly reassembled for this purpose. Now that Congress is in session all year long and can reassemble as quickly as jet planes can transport members, there is no longer any good reason for recess appointments, except as a way of getting around senatorial prerogatives. (That may indeed be desirable in some instances, but hard cases make bad law and can set bad precedents.)

That said, there remains the danger, if the Senate were to stand up to the White House and refuse either to confirm or adjourn, that the House might collude with the Administration by adjourning itself, in which case the President could invoke an obscure - and dangerous - constitutional authorization to adjourn Congress himself "to such time as he shall think proper." That would not only give him his recess appointments, but it would also thoroughly demean Congress as a mere accessory within the MAGA cult.

Our Overaged Constitution

For a long time now, the sheer longevity of the U.S. Constitution has often been held up as one of its greatest merits. It is, after all, the oldest written constitution in the world. Moreover, most western (more or less democratic) states have in fact had multiple constitutions during the 135 years that the U.S. Constitution has been in effect. That latter fact should at least invite the question about whether our overaged Constitution is still completely up to the task - or fit for purpose, as the Brits say. Given the fact that the basics of constitutional and democratic governance may be increasingly at risk in the next presidential term, it may be that much more important to distinguish the Constitution's flaws from its acknowledged virtues.

That our Constitution has lasted this long might have surprised its authors. Thomas Jefferson (who was not one of the Framers) famously thought there should be a revolution every generation. The Founders for the most part were not so radical and certainly valorized stability. That said, I suspect they would be surprised that their constitution has lasted so long in such a very different kind of world. 

In fact, of course, the original Constitution recognized its inherent limitations by providing for amendments. The constitutional amendment process is so cumbersome as to be virtually unusable in today's politically polarized context, but the early republic was smaller and more politically healthy and disposed to constitutional change. Thus, the first 15 years saw 12 amendments, including the all-important "Bill of Rights" and a modification of the already dysfunctional constitutional process for electing presidents.

The next series of constitutional amendments were the Reconstruction Amendments (14-15), which, thanks to a bloody Civil War, radically transformed the Constitution from being state-centric and slavery-tolerant to being somewhat more more federally centered, anti-slavery, and somewhat less anti-democratic. The next spurt of constitutional amending came with the early 20th-century Progressive era. So we got the Income Tax (16), popular election of Senators (17), Prohibition (18), Women's Suffrage (19), and then a little later, the "Lame Duck" Amendment (20), and the repeal of Prohibition (21). Prescinding from Prohibition, these all contributed to the increasingly democratic character of a constitutional system that was originally so much less so. These were vital improvements, which defined the 20th century's political progression.

I regard the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms as an unfortunate, anti-democratic regression, but a rather modest one. (In the present circumstances, in fact, the 22nd Amendment may be a prerequisite for salvaging constitutional and democratic governance.) The rest of the post-war amendments, moreover, definitely represented further democratic improvements on the original system - electoral votes for D.C. (23), abolition of poll taxes (24), presidential disability and succession (25), and the 18-year old vote (26). That last great spurt of amending activity reflected the post-New Deal, post-war, increasingly egalitarian and democratic society that the U.S. was then becoming. - and from which it has so dramatically regressed.

The fact that we haven't had any meaningful amendments since 1971 is telling. We have become much too divided a country to accomplish anything so consensual as amending the Constitution. But our polarized politics also highlights the dysfunctionally anti-democratic directions our Constitution makes possible.

Luckily, the recent presidential election did not see another repeat of 2000 and 2016 when the winner lost the popular vote. But, of course, that possibility remains. And, even without that outcome, the electoral college continues its massive distortion of our elections and of presidential campaigns. There is some evidence, for example, of different performance by the candidates in so-called battleground states and in so-called safe states. Trump lost states like New York, of course, but he did significantly better there than expected. and he performed better there than in some battleground states, which suggests that the Harris campaign may have had some effect in those places. Imagine an election in which candidates campaigned in all states, and voters in all states knew that their votes actually mattered! We can't predict exactly what our politics would look like, but we can be confident that it would be very different if we elected our presidents the way we elect other officials, i.e., the way a democracy would do.

The Electoral College was never intended to function as it does now. That fact itself further justifies efforts to replace it. The Senate is another story. The Framers' attraction to the classical idea of a "mixed constitution," which itself has much merit, gave us the Senate as a pseudo-aristocratic check on the democratically elected House. Personally, I regard those aspects of the Senate - such as 6-year terms, staggered tenure, and the Senate's role (very much at risk at the moment) in advising and consenting to appointments and treaties - as positive "checks and balances." Less positive, however, is the Senate's historical birth as a federalist compromise to reflect and represent the inordinate importance of the states. To be fair to the founders, none of them could have anticipated the eventual growth of the United States and thus the absurd disparity between, for example, California and Wyoming. There was no comparable disparity at the time of the founding.

Tragically, there is nothing to be done about the Senate. Certainly, viable alternatives could be imagined which would preserve the original sense of the Senate in a more sensible way. For example, we could divide the country into real regions, which make infinitely more sense than artificial states. A Senate structured to represent individual states more differentially but to represent equally the main regions of the U.S. - Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Mountain and Prairie states, Far West, and Southwest - might make sense of the Senate, but of course cannot be accomplished.

(The Senate, of course, could at least reform itself somewhat by abolishing the filibuster, which would be a major democratic advance. That would ironically also be more in line with the original sense of the Constitution, which never envisaged the filibuster. If the Republican Senate sees fit to eliminate the filibuster at some point to achieve some aspect of Trump's agenda, that might be tragic in the short term but it would be a long-term good for the country, for which the filibuster has never been anything but an antidemocratic curse.)

The third pseudo-aristocratic component of our outdated Constitution is the Judiciary, specifically the life-tenure of federal judges and Supreme Court Justices, which was part of the original Constitution, and the usurped power of judicial review, which was not. Obviously, judicial reform is also off the table, given our present inability to amend the Constitution.

So whatever a post-Trump liberal reformist agenda will look like, it will remain constrained by these anti-democratic institutional constitutional barricades. All this is especially relevant right now because the Constitution was so designed in large part to be an instrument against tyranny. Yet now it is those problematic elements in the Constitution that are especially salient in diminishing the Constitution's effective ability to be an instrument against tyranny.

At the Gates

 

“When you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.” 

In every period of human history, but especially in times of rapid change and confusion, people have looked for prophecies and predictions and dubious private revelations to explain what was happening to their formerly familiar world - as if that were what Jesus was talking about! For the same Jesus who told his hearers to be on the lookout and to recognize the signs of his coming, also assured them that “of that day or hour, no one knows.”

 

Even so, Jesus challenges his followers to be on the lookout for signs of his kingdom. 

 

So, we need to ask ourselves what things do we see happening in the world right now?

 

We certainly do seem to be in one of those times of rapid change and confusion. We live in situations that “pose new challenges, which, for us at times are difficult to understand.” In this country, we have just had a very contentious polarizing election, in which both sides employed apocalyptic language, and which, while decisive in its result, still leaves our country very divided and many of our fellow citizens very angry at one another.

 

In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus made his ominous predictions just prior to Passover, in the springtime, when the fig tree sprouts leaves, a sure sign that summer is near. It is, however, in the autumn of the year that the Church annually repeats this message. Autumn is the long-awaited and hoped-for season of harvest, when the year’s work finds fulfillment in our season of thanksgiving. 

Harvest, however, also marks an end. In nature, November vividly anticipates both the eventual end of the natural world and the eventual end of each individual. The Church recaptures for us that natural cyclical mood, as it recalls Christ’s warning words about the end, when the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. 

 

And so we wait – not just for the end of the world, but for our own individual end, which inevitably gets closer all the time. And it is precisely how we wait that identifies what following Jesus in the world is all about.

 

For following Jesus is not about pinpointing that day or hour. Nor is it about trying to identify in advance which of our neighbors shall live forever and which shall be in everlasting horror and disgrace. On the contrary, following Jesus is all about the how in the now – how we live and what we love in the here and now, what we make of this interval, whether it be long or short, until the end – in other words, the durability and quality of our commitment and our faithfulness to him and to one another for the duration. That’s what matters most over the long haul and will determine who we will be for all eternity. That is the wisdom which shall shine like the splendor of the firmament and lead many to justice.

 

Meanwhile, we are fortified for that long haul by the durability and quality of Jesus Christ’s commitment and faithfulness to his Father, the same Christ who, in the words we just heard from the letter to the Hebrews, took his seat forever at the right hand of God.

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, November 17, 2024.

Transition

Autumn weather, the welcome annual transition from summer to winter, at last seems to be (albeit belatedly) on its way. Meanwhile, in the political world, we in the United States have long been accustomed to another transition tradition at this season, as one "lame duck" President finishes out his term and prepares to transfer power to his recently elected successor.

For much of the Republic's history, the transition just happened, with greater or lesser degrees of amity and concord. With the 20th-century growth of the federal government, however, a more systematic transition became necessary. Federal law now requires requires the White House and agencies to begin transition planning well before a presidential election and the General Services Administration to provide office space and other core support services to presidents-elect and vice presidents-elect, as well as pre-election space and support to eligible candidates. Famously (or, rather, infamously) that didn't work so well four years ago. We will see how well it works this time.

The more visible - and somewhat ritualistic - aspects of the transition concern the direct, personal interactions of the principals, that is, the President and the President-elect. This usually entails at least one formal meeting of the two at the White House sometime after the election and then the formal, ceremonial meeting and ride together to the Capitol on Inauguration morning. Even that hasn't always gone so well. Witness four years ago when the outgoing President Trump boycotted his successor's inaugural. The last time that had happened was 1869, when President Andrew Johnson refused to attend President-elect Ulysses S Grant's inauguration. (Because of his health condition, in 1921 Woodrow Wilson did not attend Warren Harding's actual swearing-in, but he did do the traditional ride with him to the Capitol beforehand.)

It remains to be seen what January 20 will look like and how much of the traditional ritual will actually occur, but today at least President Biden is doing his part in welcoming President-elect Trump to confer with him at the White House. How well the outgoing and incoming staffs are collaborating may be another question, the answer to which we will learn soon enough.

The legal stipulations for transition-planning and inter-Administration cooperation reflect contemporary concerns about effectively staffing the federal government. What that federal government will actually look like once staffed by MAGA Trump cronies is something else again!

The personal and ceremonial aspects of the transition are more about constitutional and democratic symbolism - the sort of thing Americans used to take great pride in, although perhaps not so much anymore. At the first presidential transition I can really remember - from Eisenhower to Kennedy - one memorable line of commentary was, "Thus passes power, freely won, freely given." That, of course, is at the heart of constitutional, democratic governance. If not lost, that mindset has been irretrievably injured by President Trump's behavior in the 2020-2021 transition. While a return to the traditional rituals would in itself be welcome, much more important will be the long-term impact of our recent political crises on popular beliefs and attitudes about constitutional and democratic governance.